CONVERSATIONS you’ll never overhear: “I’ve got a treat for you this afternoon darling, thought we’d nip into Manchester and spend some quality time in banks looking at posters of interest rates.”
After recent planning decisions bank tourism might have to become an option in Manchester’s retail areas.
The city council is on a losing run.
It would appear the Planning Department following from policy agreed by the democratically elected officers of the city has no control over its own jurisdiction.
The Planning Inspectorate, an arm of the government based in Bristol, and the lead body for planning keeps finding against the city when it comes to Manchester city centre policy and banks.
The council doesn’t want more banks in Market Street or St Ann’s Square. Who does? As one property owner in the city centre, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “St Ann’s Square is a wasteland now, three banks, mobile phone shops, it’s a bloody commercial disaster. Whoever comes to town for a bank? Or fifty mobile phone shops? Peel don't have chains of glass box banks with ranks of cash dispensers like slot machines in their arcades at the Trafford Centre. Whittaker (the chair of Peel Group) must be laughing his face off.”
The city appears to agree and, as set out in Manchester’s Unitary Development Plan (UDP), wants to ensure ‘the predominantly retail character of the shopping street (in these areas) will be safeguarded, a limited introduction of other uses such as public houses and cafes will be encouraged’.
Thus planning permission was refused for a Lloyd’s Bank on Market Street this year. Earlier planning permission had been refused for Starbucks on St Ann’s Square to allow their site to be sold for ‘financial and professional services’.
Both these proposals required ‘change of use’ permissions and this is what the city turned down as there was, in the city's own words, concern about diluting the vitality of the shopping experience.
But Bayswater Properties (who own the Market Street site) and Starbucks appealed to the Planning Inspectorate.
And they won. The Inspectors, probably not from the city, probably not very familiar with Manchester and the changing nature of the city centre, thought putting banks in the city centre is just dandy.
Inspector Keith Manning with the St Ann’s Square appeal wrote in his report, ‘On the basis of my observations of the area (it) is a dynamic retail location at the heart of the city with many upmarket shops, an occasional vacancy and a variety of other uses.”
Dynamic. Really? Numerous reports and stories - Confidential has led on this - have shown how the strong retail presence in Kings Street and St Ann’s Square has thinned dramatically in recent years.
Manning went on to say that banking is ‘logically complementary to any dynamic and up-market shopping environment’. Four of them in one square (if Starbucks does get converted) is not complementary, it’s invasive, especially as they occupy the largest floorplates.
St Bank Square
It would appear Manning had little idea of the situation in the city and little insight into how retail was being hit by the economic downturn, crippling rents and rates and the lurch to digital shopping.
In November Inspector Alison Roland visited the Boots’ end of Market Street and was of the same mind, she found ‘little evidence to substantiate the council’s fear that the loss of the retail units, 86-88 Market Street, would compromise the retail attractiveness and function of the centre’.
The city was then left with little choice to allow the changes of use. Expect an ugly Lloyd’s glass box filled with cash points on the corner of Market Street and Pall Mall very soon. Retention of the site for retail would obviously be far better, but even a bar would be ten times more desirable – as the Development Plan states above.
Indeed the site used to be a bar.
The building Lloyds will occupy was built by UCP, United Cattle Products, in the 1960s. This featured a ‘restaurant, cafeteria, and banqueting’. The menus mainly centred on tripe, an appropriate word for the bank and mobile phone shop invasion.
Tripe then, tripe now
So is this a storm in a teacup?
At Confidential we think not. In effect it would appear the Planning Department following from policy agreed by the democratically elected officers of the city has no control over its own jurisdiction.
It can produce all the guidelines it wants, it can make a decision, in the council’s own words, over when ‘the tipping point has been reached and the retail effectiveness is about to undermined’ but it can’t prevent the Planning Inspectorate reversing it.
Suddenly this seems a question of democracy as well as a question over whether a bank should snaffle a spec formally used by real retailers. Of course there should be a right of appeal but inspectors should balance that by displaying respect for an elected body’s guidelines unless extreme circumstances dictate those guidelines should be ignored.
A final issue is the random nature of these appeals, decided by one person, who may or may not have a full backstory to call on.
At present the Starbucks in St Ann’s Square remains a coffee shop but don’t bank on it doing so. As one Confidential reader has noted, there'll probably be bank stalls on the Christmas markets next year.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
